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Leliel
2012-05-01, 07:41 PM
I'm thinking about running a superhero Urban Fantasy setting for Mutants and Masterminds, but as part of my long love affair with perspective flips, the players are going to be the nebulous occult conspiracy that wants to rule the world, and to hell with anyone in their way.

So, in my attempts to make a group that is still very sympathetic, I made the Posthumanists here.

IMPORTANT: Please note that as a way to show off how similar it is to real life occult orders, I added a bit of Bible to their mythology, and their founder was a member of a real life religion. I am not trying to offend anyone, I just want the Marvel-esque sense of being grounded in real life. My apologies, and don't start a flamewar, please.

Without Further Ado, I give you: The Posthuman Order!

The Posthuman Order

Sapience on Earth will evolve, or it will perish. Either way, 'humans', as you define them, are doomed.

- The Earl of Spencer

A surprisingly large supervillain team, the Posthumanists are a good example of how discrimination and hate are self-reinforcing stereotypes. More properly known as the Alchemic Order of the Improvement of Mankind, the Posthumanists were originally the Esohuman Aid Society, a charitable nonprofit mean to ease so-called esohumans (baseline humans changed into supernatural beings-vampires, werewolves, Deep Ones, etc) into their new lives and deal with the trauma of being transformed into what many people would call a monster. Unfortunately, the "many people" in question were louder than the cooler heads, particularly given how they were organized in the middle of World War II, when it was still considered acceptable for American troops to get mad that their British fellows had desegregated pubs. Immediately accused of being an Axis-allied organization (for...some reason that made sense to the accusers), the EAS was regularly spat on and persecuted, and the Cold War didn't improve things ("Ahhh! Vampire Commies!").

By the time the Civil Rights Movement had fully rolled around, the EAS had grown to thoroughly dislike normal humans and most supers, who they saw as either fools defending a people who would rather provoke nuclear war than admit to flaws in their nations or just as bad-and it was hard to disagree with them (more than a few "slayer" type heroes hunted them for no other reason then they were an easy target). Eventually, a leader emerged from them, who promised a world in which they could live away from fear of the inquisitor, the racist, and their sheep, in equality with mortals.

Unfortunately, that man was Tyrell X.

A (moderate, admittedly) Black Muslim before a chance accident involving an Eldritch Abomination forced Dr. Occult to replace most of his body with a golem, he came to the attention of Arabic alchemists hoping to discover a way to replicate his prosthesis on his pilgrimage to Mecca. In return for his cooperation, they taught him the basics of alchemy, and he soon proved to be a genius when it came to the science of magic. He returned two years later, changed for the better as part of his spiritual purification during his studies...but still wholeheartedly believing that the minority had a right to conquer the majority, just with his minority of choice being a bit wider than just those of African descent. He soon joined the EAS, where his impassioned speeches proclaiming that esohumanity deserved recognition for their powers and undeserved suffering found many ears. In one short decade, he was made the President of the EAS, despite impassioned pleading that his radical ideology would lead them to ruin.

Two months afterward, he published The Descent Into Mortality, an occult history drawing heavily from both the theology of the Nation of Islam, Theosophy, transhumanism, and whatever occult texts he felt supported his position. The book detailed the story of the Nephilim, the first esohumans, born from the coupling of human women and the angelic Grigori. Unlike conventional depictions though, Tyrell portrayed this not as the Grigori indulging their lusts at the expense of their heavenly duties to uplift mankind, but an outgrowth-Samyaza, the leader of the Grigori, recognized that the sin of Cain had poisoned the hearts of humanity, and asked permission of Allah to mix the holy, virtuous genes of angels into humanity, giving them the wisdom to properly use the knowledge they gifted to humans. Allah assented, and their Nephilim sons and daughters (Tyrell is many things, and a feminist is one) went on the found the blessed kingdom of Atlantis, where all lived in harmony with God. Unfortunately, one Nephilim, named Yakub, chose to ignore the wisdom his blood whispered to him out of jealousy for his cousins and siblings, and founded the corrupt empire of Ultima Thule, where he carried out obscene experiments on the other Nephilim's esohuman creations and children, modifying them so that they were forced to prey on mortals to survive and breed (hence why vampires need to drink blood, stuff like that), so that he would control his nation through fear of them. Eventually, while Atlantis had more power and more advanced technology, Thule's lack of any moral scruples eventually lead them to break through their rival nation's defenses and invade, killing any pure esohuman or Nephilim they came across. Eventually, Noah, the prince of Atlantis, was forced to flood his beloved continent to stop Yakub's madness from endangering the entire world, leaving him the last Nephilim and with only his family to help rebuild.

But fear and hate runs deep, and while Yakub and his empire were destroyed in the flood, the mortal soldiers of Thule lived on, and only saw their oppressors in the House of Noah. In order to protect what was left of their grandchildren, the Grigori wove a spell of concealment across Noah's family-they would be as mortals until something within awoke their true, esohuman nature, freeing them to live among the armies of Thule. The House of Noah, so protected, would then lay with the soldiers and their descendants, passing on their inner esohuman nature to all of humanity, which is why all mortals can develop superpowers-it's actually a mere fragment of Noah's own power, and so that of the Nephilim. The book goes on to say that, before he died, Noah used his precognitive abilities to reveal that, on the day that esohumanity is fully recognized as the grandchildren of angels, the Grigori will see that mankind has become wise enough to never be fooled by another Yakub, and so raise Atlantis and it's civilization from the depths. Then, all of humanity will become esohumans, as Samyaza now recognizes it was a mistake to concentrate power in the hands of a few, no matter how wise, and will cure all of Yakub's curse.

While The Descent Into Mortality was critically scoffed at, it wasn't any fault of Tyrell's-there was indeed a civilization ruled over by pacifist superhumans in the distant past, with a far more warlike rival, though his picture of them is certainly a bit rose-colored. And when it comes down to it, no one can adequately explain why when, on a whim, the revenant now known as the Earl of Spencer (a mocking reference to the founder of Social Darwinism) proceeded to launch an expedition to the exact place where Tyrell said Noah's Ark went down, he found a Varmina, an Atlantean mobile fortress, with his descriptions of the ship being accurate within a 5% margin of Error (he was mistaken about where the decks were located).

Emboldened by the idea that they were right, the more radical members of the EAS split off from their parent organization to form the Posthumanists, and quickly swallowed it. Their goal, as the Earl sees it (while Tyrell X is still an esohuman supremacist, he's grown more fair in his latter years and is frightened by the Posthumanists' actions) is to create as many esohumans as possible and insert them into the highest reaches of government, creating a world where, as they say, esohumans are noticeably more equal than mortals. While vastly far from being the most evil supervillain organization of all time-in fact, on a Top 50 Most Vile Syndicates poll, they came in at #48-and number #49 counts Robin Hood as a member), they are ruthless in the pursuit of their goals of universal esohuman equality, and their uncanny ability to replicate Atlantean alchemic techiques and technologies make them an unpredictable foe.

Still, most superhumans can't help but feel extremely sorry for them. They didn't ask to become supernatural beings (not most of them), and from can be seen, the Earl's life before he became a ghost animating his own corpse was a long parade of humiliations, tortures, and tragedies (it started with being penniless during the Industrial Revolution), and up until he became the Earl, they continued endlessly, leading many psychologists to believe he's not so much evil as profoundly disturbed and bitter, and being undead doesn't help matters. And they're usually willing to help when something truly destructive threatens the world-part of the reason for their success is that there the ends are good-it's the means that are suspicious.

So, like it? Anything I need to change that to make their backstory better?